For anyone who plays Overwatch and doesn't know, Blizzard currently has a charity Pink Mercy skin that supports the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, a foundation which puts 91% of all money donated towards breast cancer research. It is admittedly a little pricey at $15 (I was fortunate enough to be gifted it by a friend), but all of the $15 goes towards the BCRF.
Info can be found here: link text
"Just leave me alone. I'm not myself. I'm falling apart, and I don't want you here." - ― Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon
@apu I might give it a look, I messed around shortly after the initial release and it was fun, I also remember the sandstorms being some of the most awesomely intimidating experiences I have ever had in a game.
@apu @Sonder and I are getting ours tonight. Great skin for a great cause.
My friend was sweet and got it for me. The new sound effects are so awesome. 
State of Decay 2 is coming out soon. (The ultimate edition whatsit actually unlocks tonight.)
I bring this up because...
1.) State of Decay 1 was fantastic.
2.) It will have Xbox and PC cross-platform play.
I bought it, of course. And would love to try some co-op if anyone's interested.
P.S. - It is only 30 bucks for the regular edition and looks fantastic from the trailers and Let's Plays.
The beta version of the Android build of Steam Link is out; the iOS build should be soon.
If you have a burning desire to cast your PC games to your television via Android TV box (or Apple TV) and don't have one of the dedicated Steam Link boxes, or if you want to be able to play your games in the bathroom on your phone (I'm not going to judge -- much), Valve's got you covered.
So uh... two hours of State of Decay 2 played.
The game is pretty meaty. I can see where it would really shine in co-op.
I like it so far, but I just hope there's no 'shit gets worse when you're offline' mechanic like the original seemed to have.
Logging in to a nearly dead base was kind of lame.
@admiral said in General Video Game Thread:
So uh... two hours of State of Decay 2 played.
The game is pretty meaty. I can see where it would really shine in co-op.
I like it so far, but I just hope there's no 'shit gets worse when you're offline' mechanic like the original seemed to have.
Logging in to a nearly dead base was kind of lame.
The world pauses when you are offline, unlike the first one. If it isn't in yet, it is supposed to be in very soon.
It is rare that I see this kind of wonderful development effort put into a Kickstarter for a game. I'm tossing this down here for people interested in dungeon rogue-likes. They even offer you a free demo to play before you even drop money into the Kickstarter.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1926605606/stoneshard-open-world-roguelike-rpg-with-tactical
Battletech.
Just. Battletech. I cannot say enough about Battletech. Maybe it has something to do with it being my first foray into games that didn't involve things like Monopoly or checkers, or that my friends and I growing up got so hardcore into the thing that we set up a 10x10 foot playing field (using Battleforce maps laid over by sheets of plexiglass) to have four on four company battles that lasted the better part of a weekend, or that I've just been totally inundated in everything having to do with the franchise (including all the nonsense about the Unseen and whatnot) from 1st Edition Battledroids up until Fasa decided to stop making games... but I freaking love this iteration of it. There are a number of differences from what I remember (so I'm not sure if they had to do with changes in the actual rules, or just kludges for video game balance - like the limiting of not just critical spaces or weapon types, but total number of weapons per type per location) and there's one or two things I did find annoying (like how punishing Heat can be - not just shutting down or penalizing your mech, but also doing more damage to it than most enemies could ever hope to do in an alpha strike) But ... yeah. Battletech. I kickstarted it. I have the freaking jacket; and thankfully, the game delivers. If you're into turn-based strategy, and looking for something that isn't X-Com (As one review put it, the difference here is that, in X-com, your soldiers die if they get hit too much - while mechs can lose an arm or torso segment and not really notice) I'd definitely recommend it.
@killer-klown
You missed out on the BT mech nerd conversation a few pages back. But I am glad you are enjoying it so much.
@jaded Yeah, I just caught up on that. Good stuff nonetheless.
And as a belated answer to Theno's question somewhere in there, vehicles (at least in the rules as I remember them) were a different beast from Mechs in terms of armor and durability. With mechs, you had a set amount of internal structure based on the tonnage, and up to double that number in armor points. Vehicles had no internal structure to speak of - you could slap as much armor on to the things as could fit within the tonnage. However, where mechs could lose a limb or torso segment and keep going, a vehicle was destroyed if any segment of it was breached.
That said, I did once put together an annoyance lance consisting of four 50-ton hovertanks with no weapon and maxed out armor and engines. Charge rules were such that you did 1 point per 10 tons of weight, multiplied by the number of hexes moved - and a topped off Hovertank could move at something like 16 or 18 hexes. Basically, 80-90 points of damage to a single leg; which, if it overcame both armor and structure (likely, given that even an Atlas had only 21 Structure and 41 armor in each leg), the remainder would be transferred to the torso. It was also pretty common for most mechs to store ammo in their legs, and we played before the age of CASE - so ...
@killer-klown
Vehicles were also prone to easy crit kills. It was not uncommon to have a single LRM 5 hit with 3 missiles, score a crit and get the 'crew killed' result. Then you pretty much have a fully armored paperweight.
True that; but they were cheap. The main defensive advantage you had with them was their increased movement <especially with hovers> but, conversely, you also had far greater terrain restrictions too.
@jaded
Or the fact the vehicles didn't track heat (at least in the edition at the time I played) so if hit with a flamer instead of getting more heat there was a chance they just cooked off regardless of armor. In a long term tabletop Mechwarrior/Battletech campaign one of the players started with a Firestarter (I think that was the name, light mech whose main weapon was flamers) it quickly became the vehicle slayer of the group.
Oh, yeah. Also remember Inferno SRMs?
@killer-klown
Yeah Inferno SRMs were a wonderful wonderful thing in later editions of battletech, especially after they made the rules changes where a single volley of them could wipe out a whole squad of elementals.
My main memory of elementals was playing Mechwarrior 2: Mercenaries on a computer barely (not really) to handle it and being unable to hit the little bastards whilst playing at around 15 FPS.
Streak launchers were lifesavers there.
@packrat Yeah. My cheese weapon in the MW series, from 2 on, were medium pulse lasers. Best damage-to-heat-to-weight ratio, plus fired fast enough that you weren't punished too much for missing.
For anyone who plays Overwatch and doesn't know, Blizzard currently has a charity Pink Mercy skin that supports the Breast Cancer Research Foundation, a foundation which puts 91% of all money donated towards breast cancer research. It is admittedly a little pricey at $15 (I was fortunate enough to be gifted it by a friend), but all of the $15 goes towards the BCRF.
Info can be found here: link text
